BubbleStream

Kathy DiSanto

Hunter's Shadow

Synopsis

Candy Johnson was born to be a PI–sharp, shrewd, and gutsy. Unfortunately, fate didn't get the memo.
Temporarily trapped in a small-town gym teacher's life, Candy is marking time until she can make her big career change, when the mystery that's George Price drops right into her lap. Sure he's got a face and body to die for. He's also got the personality of a three-pound dumbbell and doesn't know his volleyballs from a hole in the ground. If Price is who he claims to be, Candy's Mother Theresa.
When she decides to investigate Donnerton High's newest and most aggravating faculty member, she runs across some very interesting quirks in Pinhead Price's personality–flashes of tall, dark, and dangerous she finds almost impossible to resist. Before long and against all good judgment, she starts to fall, and fall hard, for a man who bears all the earmarks of a wolf in nerd's clothing.
But what will she do when she discovers the shocking truth about George?

Author Biography

Kathy’s publishing career dates back to 1997, when she published a two-book romance series with Bantam’s Loveswept line. The first book in the series, For Love or Money, won a 1997 Romantic Times Reviewer’s Choice Award.
In 2012, Kathy self-published two thrillers. Amanda’s Eyes, the first book in a series featuring crime reporter A.J. Gregson, is a paranormal thriller that has garnered a 4.4★ average on Amazon and was a semi-finalist in Kindle Book Review's 2014 Best Kindle Book Awards. Her second thriller, Why Live?, is dystopian science fiction.
Current projects include the sequel to Amanda's Eyes, semi-sweet remixes of her two romance novels, and posts to her blogs Write Minded (on the writing life) and Momma D's Diary (a humorous look at aging and retirement).
As a communications specialist with a major university, Kathy wrote more than one hundred features for print and the web. Now retired and writing full-time, she enjoys meditation; reading; live performances by her sons (both professional musicians); brisk walks with her rescue dogs, Molly and Lucy; and playing handy gal around her 92-year-old, foursquare home in Martinsburg, WV.

Author Insight

A Death-defying Leap to Conclusions

I'm the Queen of Jumping to Conclusions, Empress of Never Guessed Right. Oh, the anxiety attacks I've endured, simply because I mentally leaped before I looked. In this scene from HUNTER'S SHADOW, small-town gym teacher and erstwhile PI Candy Johnson takes a massively mistaken leap of her own. Assuming her beloved has gone cowboy and determined to save him from himself, she gallops off to form a posse. But what a posse! I hope you enjoy this excerpt from Book 2 of the sweet Golden State Hearts romance trilogy!

Book Excerpt

Hunter's Shadow

The NRA had a lot going for it, Candy decided as she sprinted across the parking lot. Guns and plenty of them. At least half those guns appeared to be prominently displayed in window racks in the muscular pickups strewn around her. The patrons of the Happy Camper Bar and Grill obviously enjoyed a hefty dose of firepower with their horsepower.

Hopefully, they were already locked and loaded, because time was of the essence, and the right to bear arms had just become her favorite constitutional amendment.

An eerily glowing porthole punctuated the Happy Camper’s massive door, a slab of oak she all but ripped off the hinges as she stumbled into the second dive she’d visited in three days. If she kept hanging around with George, she’d be making a name for herself in no time. Candy Johnson, codename: Barfly.

Unlike Hog Heaven, which resembled a concrete cave, the Happy Camper sported wooden walls festooned with beer signs, a herd of deer antlers, and a mounted trout the size of Jaws. The backslapping, two-stepping, cue-clacking crowd in denim, flannel, and a colorful assortment of gimme caps had probably tippled through several consecutive happy hours.

She noticed these details peripherally as she did the dodge-and-weave to the bar. Perched on the corner stool, Henry Adams hefted a pilsner glass, working diligently on his already impressive beer belly with his eyes glued to the flat screen angled in the corner.

Candy clutched his red flannel sleeve. “Henry, thank God. I need—”

“Bottom of the sixth, two outs,” he bellowed. “Dodgers are up by one.” And that’s when she remembered he was practically deaf.

She whirled to face the man on her other side. “Chet, please, I need your help!”

“What?” Chet Lewis swiveled his scarecrow body on the bar stool. “What’s that you say?”

“I need your help.”

He shook his head, jabbed a finger toward the bawling jukebox. “You’re gonna have to speak up.” Then he scowled, fiery brows snapping together. “Hey, what’re you doin’ here, anyway? This ain’t no place for a school teacher!”

You’re telling me, and what I’m doing at the moment is getting nowhere fast.

Loosing a frustrated growl, she bounded across the room and lunged for the jukebox. Nobody noticed her mad scramble for the cord, until she jerked the plug and snuffed Pam Tillis mid “Crazy Life.” Slurred what the hells followed her back across the dance floor.

Clambering onto the bar, Candy planted herself between the viewing audience and home plate. “Listen up! I need—”

A drunken hoot from the vicinity of the pool table interrupted her clarion call to arms.

“Well, aww right! We got us one of them exotic dancers! Crank ‘er up, honey! Shake that thang!”

Mac the bartender’s murderous glare cut from Candy to the back of the room. “I warned you about that last beer, Winston. And you’re a damned site drunker than I thought, if you can’t tell the difference between an exotic dancer and a gym teacher.”

Leaning heavily on his cue stick, beefy Winston Powell squinted. “Gym teacher, you say? Well, hell. What’s she doing up there on the bar, if she ain’t gonna—”

“Will you all shut up and listen?” Candy roared, and silence fell like a ton of bricks. She drew a deep breath. “I need men.” When Winston and his lewd grin stepped forward, her hand shot up. “Let me qualify that. I need a posse.”